Irvin Ungar on Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art

Introduction by Shana Penn (Taube Philanthropies)

Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Noon-1:00pm
The Magnes
2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94720
Free and open to the public

In 2017, The Magnes acquired from Irvin Ungar, a private collector, the most significant collection of
works by Arthur Szyk (Łódź, Poland, 1894 – New Canaan, Connecticut, 1951) thanks to an
unprecedented gift from Taube Philanthropies. Szyk’s works are now available to the world in a public
institution for the first time as the Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection.

Irvin Ungar is the author of many publications on the work of Arthur Szyk, and most recently of Arthur
Szyk, Soldier in Art (Giles, 2017), the winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in the category of
Visual Arts. This publication includes original essays by Michael Berenbaum, Tom L. Freudenheim,
James Kettlewell, and Irvin Ungar. Arthur Szyk, Soldier in Art celebrates the diverse aspects of Szyk's
career and examines his highly detailed artwork. The volume includes over 200 full-color plates of key
works by Szyk arranged by theme, a timeline of Szyk's life, an extensive list of major exhibitions at
museums and galleries, a complete bibliography of his illustrated books, and photographs of the artist.

The presentation will take place in the auditorium of The Magnes, where high-resolution images of
select collection items in the Auditorium of The Magnes present the public with an unprecedented
insight to the many worlds of Arthur Szyk

More at bit.ly/soldierinart
Irvin Ungar, a former pulpit rabbi and antiquarian bookseller, has devoted the past quarter-century
to scholarship on Arthur Szyk. He has curated and consulted for numerous Szyk exhibitions,
including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Deutsches Historisches Museum (Berlin), the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Library of Congress, and the New-York Historical
Society. Ungar is the author of Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art, co-producer of the documentary film, Soldier
in Art: Arthur Szyk, and the creator and publisher of the luxury limited edition of The Szyk Haggadah.
He has also served as the curator of the former Arthur Szyk Society in Burlingame, California.

Shana Penn is the Executive Director of Taube Philanthropies, in San Francisco, and a visiting scholar at
the Graduate Theological Union’s Center for Jewish Studies, in Berkeley. At Taube Philanthropies, she
developed and continues to oversee the Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland. Her book, Solidarity’s
Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (University of Michigan Press, 2005) was
awarded Best Book in Slavic and East European Women’s Studies by the American Association of
Women in Slavic Studies. It was published as Sekret Solidarnośći by W.A.B. Publishers (Warsaw) in 2014.
In 2013, Shana was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland
for both her gender studies research and advocacy of Polish-Jewish relations.

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, Ca 94720-6300
magnes.berkeley.edu